Building smell

If you ever get the privilege of visiting Andre House, you will notice a distinct smell that permeates everything. We like to refer to it as “building smell.” It is a product of poor hygiene on the part of our guests, complicated by a poor living environment. We refer to our hospitality center as “the building,” so that is where we get “building smell.” Building smell is a unique combination of human urine, feces, sweat, and body odor, burning crack, tobacco, and marijuana, week-old beans and potatoes fermenting in the garbage bins, decomposing everything in the dumpster, the bleach we try and disinfect everything with, and basically anything and everything else that is disgusting. Every now and then you can get a whiff of what is cooking in the kitchen courtesy of the exhaust fan. All of this is made worse by the fact that it is so hot, so the smell just cooks and gets that much worse. Believe me, I make every effort to reduce the foulness of building smell, but there is only so much one (or nine) human beings can do to combat such odorificness (I know that’s not a word). Some people say that they can notice building smell in the food we eat, but I can’t say that I’ve experienced that. Nevertheless, it’s just another part of the privilege of working at Andre House.